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My unread books-owned list has tipped from a comfortably happy list (“Yay! Look how many books I have in front of me to read!”) into a suffocating list (“Oh no! Look how many books I have in front of me to read!”). And yet, I know I will add more to my list this month. An e-book pops up for sale, and I think about how if I don’t grab it now, I won’t be able to read it later because it’s not in the library system or I will be paying full price. Or an author puts out a new book, and I want to own it, not borrow it. So the list grows.

I have a tendency if I own the book to wait to read it. Even if it was top of my TBR before the purchase. I guess my reasoning is that if I own it, I can read it any time. And if I’m borrowing it, I have it for three weeks. And once the library’s license is gone, the opportunity to read it is gone. So I keep bypassing what I own in favour of what I don’t.

I decided to make an effort and read books I own for 15 minutes in the morning. I started with Andrew Sean Greer’s Less. I own it in paper and in e-book form, but I put off reading it for years because I knew I would like it once I read it, and I always wanted it in front of me rather than behind. Probably not the best way to approach my TBR. But now I’m reading it and enjoying it, and I can see myself continuing this trend now that I’ve broken the seal. Hopefully I will at least be able to keep a balance of new books in and old books out.

Every time I find an article on the concept of “lagom,” I pause on it because I know this idea doesn’t come naturally to me. If something is good, I tend to want more of it. Time with the twins is good? I want more of  it. Of course. But I’ve also been known to fall in love with a box of tea and buy excessive amounts of it, or have fun on a trip and want to stuff in more sights or more days. It’s a hard idea for me to wrap my brain around: That just because something is good doesn’t mean that you should have more.

The most recent article was in BigThink.

Many of us have internalized the ideas that bigger means better, that a bank balance means status, and that excess means happiness. Lagom, though, is to enjoy the “just right.” It’s not simply learning to “enjoy the simple things,” but also appreciating that sometimes less really is more.

The examples make sense: “Talking to a friend over a coffee is nice. But meeting with ten friends after ten coffees does not make things better.” Yes, absolutely, true. But at the same time, I kept replacing the example with things I really do want in larger amounts: books, time with people I love, photographs. And in all of those places, more really was more.

What do you think of this idea?

I’m reluctant to say “better,” even though we bring back a lot of candy when we travel and often import candy once we’re home. (It’s not that expensive if you batch it and pay for shipping once.) But it is definitely different and definitely preferred.

The top choice (because we’re apparent a bunch of old ladies) is Simpkins travel sweets. They are on the kitchen counter and usually in my purse. (Or, if not, Jila mints or Wilhelmina mints.) I know — probably not the sexy choice, but I love a good travel sweet. And these are my favourite ones.

Favourite chocolate candy (which I haven’t had in years) is Rowntree’s peppermint crisp (which, I guess, is now Nestle peppermint crisp). Close second is the Ritter Sport peppermint. Followed by straight Dairy Milk Cadbury. And then Fry’s peppermint cream. And finally Elite’s mekupelet. I know, it makes no sense why I ranked Cadbury between the two nearly identical peppermint chocolate options, but they are different in texture, and I like the Ritter Sport one better. And I would never transliterate the Hebrew to “mekupelet,” but that’s what came up when I Googled. Strange. It’s like a Cadbury flake, but better.

What are your favourite candies outside your country?

We went to the beach this weekend. We’ll go several more times before the twins leave for college because it’s a short trip — a quick drive that we make either for the weekend or as a daytrip. So I know it’s not the last time we’ll go, but I spent the weekend thinking about how at this time next year, we won’t have these spontaneous trips. Josh and I will still take them, but the twins won’t be with us because they’ll be away at school. It will change the rhythm of the trip, the routines we fall into the moment we enter the town.

I didn’t want to spend the weekend sad, but I also couldn’t convince my brain not to think like this. It didn’t help that we were surrounded by pregnant women and toddlers. It was as if we were a magnet, dragging every single woman 6 – 8 months pregnant into our orbit and depositing them in beach chairs around us.

I watched small children run into the ocean and fill buckets with water and roll in the sand, and my heart hurt. I was so jealous of these strangers. I didn’t covet their kids. I coveted more time with mine.

I’m hoping that by feeling things now that I’m letting out these intense emotions slowly over time. Like a slow release valve rather than feeling it all next August.

I’ll admit that in all of my books, the acknowledgments page was the best section to write. My only fear was missing someone on the list, but I kept notes through the process and hopefully got to everyone both inside and outside of the publishing house. It takes a lot of people to make one book.

So I love this thought from My Sweet Dumb Brain. She writes an acknowledgments list for life. As in, all of the people who make your day/week/month/year possible. We rarely do anything alone. There is almost always someone who makes the thing we’re doing possible — from making your coffee for you when you’re out to literally being a member of your work team.

She takes it a step further to also thank the tools and inanimate objects that make her day possible.

It’s a fun exercise to do or think through.